Review of reviews: Art & Music

Kendrick Lamar

Damn

Kendrick Lamar’s rapping is “nothing short of athletic,” said Justin Charity in TheRinger.com. The latest album from the 29-year-old Grammy winner “feels much less like an art project” than To Pimp a Butterfly, his jazzinflected 2015 opus; this record is more in touch with contemporary hip-hop, and often more fun. Yet on Damn, Kendrick remains a transcendent talent working at his creative peak: “He is wonderfully varied in form, and propulsive without end.” He can make a breathless eight-bar run-on sentence feel like an understatement (“DNA”), and then, on the next track, sing to a woozy groove (“Yah”). The “bounce-heavy” single “Humble” is one of the record’s standout tracks, said Stereo Williams in TheDailyBeast.com. Most of the other 13 tracks are more subdued, presenting a star and would-be seer as world-weary and uncertain as the rest of us. Though Damn affirms his standing as contemporary rap’s foremost sociopolitical voice, “he’s still figuring it all out”—and “his art is richer for it.”

John Mayer

The Search for Everything

John Mayer is opening up, said Jim Farber in Entertainment Weekly. Almost every track on his first album in four years is about his breakup with Katy Perry, and while the result is the “most deeply personal” album the singer-songwriter has ever made, “the slickness of the music blunts some of the impact.” His agile guitar work recalls late Eric Clapton, and “as always,” Mayer’s songs “stick to a scrupulously tidy mix of pop-R&B and folk rock.” Only occasionally— as on “Helpless” and “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me”—does the brilliance of the songwriting overcome his inability to cut loose. At times, the whole project “feels more like a political campaign than an artistic work,” said Glenn Gamboa in Newsday. Mayer is still gunning for a comeback from the damage he did with some off-putting 2010 interviews. But “he also wants everyone to think that he’s clever,” an impulse that makes the otherwise charming “Still Feel Like Your Man” sound insincere. “Mayer’s search, it appears, is still on.”

Les Amazones d’Afrique

République Amazone

What better name for an all-female supergroup of West African singers? asked Andy Gill in The Independent (U.K.). Dedicated to combating violence against women, Les Amazones d’Afrique have delivered a debut album that’s “a proud, forceful demonstration of the strength and variety of modern African music.” The 10-woman group includes Grammy winner Angélique Kidjo and other international names. But there are regional stars and up-and-coming musicians, too, like Malian griotte Kandia Kouyaté and Nigerian soul singer Nneka. Their shared musical vocabulary spans funk, Afrobeat, desert blues, dub, and more. Missing is the sense of community that makes the collective’s live performances so exuberant, said Robin Denselow in Guardian.com. Producer Liam Farrell too often lets electronic instrumentation dominate, though “some of it works well.” Listen, for example, to the electrified log drum in the rousing “Dombolo,” or the psychedelic effects swirling around the vocal duet in “Anisokoma.” ■